Developments in the fields of fabrication and the use of microcantilevers have recently led to technologies for rapid detection of extremely small amounts of a variety of materials in a large number of samples. Applications for these technologies include the fields of diagnostics and environmental measurements, including measurement of chemicals and pathogens having military significance.
Microcantilevers are described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,050,722, issued Apr. 18, 2000, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,096,559, issued Aug. 1, 2000. Microcantilevers having one surface customized to detect one or more of several types of microforces in the environment, the microforces causing a change in surface tension resulting in deflection of the cantilever, are known in the art (U.S. Pat. No. 6,118,124, issued Sep. 12, 2000, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,325,904, issued Dec. 4, 2001, both of which are incorporated herein in their entireties). Typically, a microcantilever is activated, i.e., deflects, in the presence of a microforce in an environment of the microcantilever, from an original or resting position of the cantilever in the absence of the microforce. A chemical microforce is generated by the presence of a chemical composition in a fluid sample in contact with the cantilever. The composition interacts with and binds to a component of a customized cantilever surface of the array of cantilevers.
For maximally efficient use of microcantilever detector technology, it is desirable to have an apparatus that simultaneously reads the deflections of a large number of microcantilevers. It would be further desirable to integrate such an apparatus into a system to record and analyze the data, to produce a useful output.